


Tangibility

by waterlogged



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Closure, Daddy Issues, Dom Tony Stark, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Baggage, Light Dom/sub, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Sub Pietro Maximoff, Violence, Violent Sex, Violent Thoughts, at times - Freeform, looking for closure, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 04:57:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11662095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterlogged/pseuds/waterlogged
Summary: It’s utterly inexplicable, but half the time Pietro finds himself wanting to kill Tony, and the other half he finds himself desperately attracted to him. Wanda’s no help, which would be fine, if he could just help himself.





	Tangibility

 

 

Passion; misplaced emotion.

Wanda chides Pietro for stealing a hot dog from a vendor; Pietro takes a daisy from the woman on the street calling ‘floras’, and leaves it sitting in a stemmed vase on Wanda’s countertop – daisies are her favourite.

 ---

“Stay for the film,” Wanda says, her tone a suggestion but the level look she has fixed on him more reflective of her intentions.

People can never say what they mean, dodging around the bullet like ants around a fallen leaf, stubbornly clinging to their own realities despite evidence of the contrary 

Pietro doesn’t share that problem. His reality is hyper-clear and overwhelmingly present, so tangible he can choke on the stifling immediacy of it. The world lives at quarter speed; for him the human instant lingers, spilling into the next moment and then the next before it finally passes for everyone else.

Wanda, of all people, should be able to understand that.

“I think I shall pass.”

“Pietro - ”

A lecture on acceptance and team participation isn’t on his current to-do list, and there’s nothing he’s actively repenting for, so he departs before she can get his name out.

Out of consideration, he does stop by, some hours later. Wanda is on the couch between Tony and the Vision, Steve sitting on the floor against the armchair Natasha lounges across. Pietro feels a spike of anger rip through him. Wanda’s head begins to turn towards him but he’s already gone, supressing the emotion and berating himself for allowing his sister to sense his discontentment.

 ---

“I didn’t think you were the drinking type.”

Pietro doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch.

The lights snap on, but Pietro’s eyes adjust to the shift with ease. He’d heard Tony coming ages ago; the sound of the elevator doors opening, the lurching moment of silence that followed. And then, at last, Tony’s shoes as they slapped obnoxiously against the marble flooring, wasting an eternity between each arrhythmic step.

Pietro doesn’t turn, his reflection gazing back at him in the polished granite of the bar’s backsplash:

“I’m not.”

But Tony is the drinking type, and in the granite Pietro can also see the unintended slope of Tony’s shoulder as he comes to a stop. The man holds a glass in his hand, his weight settling on his dominate leg.

The glass comes to Tony’s lips, but the details are murky amongst the white flecks that pepper the dark stone that Pietro watches him through. Tony watches Pietro’s back, and then sticks his free hand into the pocket of his jeans. Pietro keeps his body still. It’s not a herculean effort now, as it usually is, the pleasure he derives from knowing how unsettling it is to Tony enough compensation to quell his impulses.

Another eternity passes, stretching out between the shift of Tony’s head to the side, the shuffle of his non-weight bearing foot, the clink of the ice against the glass. “So, what are you doing here?” Tony finally asks.

Pietro turns then, a light pivot that he slows (sometimes it used to make Wanda nauseous, watching him shift this way and that too quickly), and can instantly see that Tony is drunk. Unanimated, the lines on Tony’s face sit deeper, his usual curiosity sated by wariness.

With a half-smile and a fluid arm gesture, Pietro answers: “I thought I lived here.”

“You live in an apartment, ten floors down.”

“Tomato, toe-mato,” Pietro chimes at the tail of Tony’s sentence, and the flare of agitation that passes across Tony’s face is more akin to a micro-expression than anything intentional.

But Tony’s temper evens quickly, and he rolls his wrist idly to cycle the ice around in the amber liquid inside his glass. The ice clinks against the edge, and Pietro can hear the difference as it bumps and glides against the glass.

“You can leave now."

Pietro feels that same spike of anger he’d felt looking in on Wanda and the others. The dismissive tone has all his instincts railing against compliance, and he bares his teeth in an antagonistic smile,

“What if I don’t?”

The challenge is met with narrowed eyes, Tony’s jaw clenching and unclenching within the span of a twitch. A deep inhale causes Tony’s chest to ride up, but the subsequent sigh has his muscles drooping. “Whatever.”

Tony turns and leaves, and Pietro stares at his back, the sound of Tony’s shoes taunting his eardrums.

Pietro hates that man, and he doesn’t really understand why.

 ---

“Quicksilver, stand down."

  
Steve’s voice filters clear as crystal through the comms, but Pietro knows that he’s fast enough to beat Tony’s repulser beams. The heat of the blast singes the tips of his hair, but he has the beacon in his hand at the end of the mad sprint; the maneuver was successful. 

“You crazy fu-”

“Tony!” Steve chides, riding over the swear; the robots have been disintegrated, but with the beacon saved, Stark’s tech people should be able to reverse engineer enough data to hopefully place the location of the robot origins. It would have been a calculated loss had Pietro not gotten it, but why stand to lose the potential data when it wasn’t necessary?

Pietro drops the beacon off with Wanda, who gives him a wilting look of disappointment. The first syllable of his name doesn’t have a chance to leave her lips. The comm is in her other hand as he takes off for the Brooklyn Bridge.

Debriefs are insidiously painful, and he instead occupies his time traversing the streets of midtown, etching them into his memory. Night has fallen by the time he makes his way back into the tower, and FRIDAY informs him as he scales the stairs that SHIELD would like to see him in the morning. The disembodied voice shifts up with levels of stair case, sync’d to Pietro’s speed.

The fact that the voice can follow him is unnerving, and instead of stopping off at the floor he shares with Wanda, Pietro heads to the penthouse.

With a burst of speed, he manages to beat FRIDAY’s sensors, hitting the doors before they can lock out to deny his bio-signature.

Tony may not even be here, but Pietro can still smell the ends of his own burnt hair, and he can’t refuse the inexplicable need to see the man.

The hallway lights don’t have a chance to flicker on, so he sees the shape of Tony’s head silhouetted against the backdrop of city skyline. 

Pietro’s already standing there when Tony notices he’s arrived, cursing and spilling his drink across his lap. “Jesus!” Tony shouts, and he tries to mop up the mess ineffectually with his sleeve. “FRIDAY!”

“He is very quick,” FRIDAY replies unapologetically.

Tony stops fussing with his pants and glares up at Pietro. The half-full drink shakes in his hand, and Pietro stares back at him evenly. “The hell are you doing here?” Tony demands; he’s angry, annoyed, and about ready to pitch into intoxicated territory.

“I live here,” Pietro tells him, and Tony huffs in an overly exasperated way,

“You live-”

“Ten floors down, yes, I know.” And what difference does it make, that he lives down there, to his presence here, in the penthouse, now?

Tony’s jaw clenches, this time the frustration sustained and spilling into the subsequent moments. “I almost killed you out there,” he grates out, and Pietro realizes that Tony feels guilty about that.

The realization that Tony feels guilty for almost killing him ignites a rage in Pietro that has him knocking the drink from Tony’s hands in order to straddle the man where he sits on the couch, his hand around Tony’s throat.

He doesn’t squeeze – he doesn’t squeeze hard, but Pietro can feel Tony’s blood beating out a steady rhythm against his thumb, can see the shock blossoming on Tony’s face. The reaction is delayed, even after accounting for Pietro’s heightened sense of time – eyes widen, fear dilates the pupils, the lungs inhale to boost the oxygen in the system, arms come up to try and fend off the attack.

But it’s not an attack, and Pietro’s superior reflexes easily pin one lunging arm under his knee, and he grabs onto the other with his free hand.

Still, he doesn’t squeeze harder. Just enough to be present, just enough to be threatening –

The intent to scare, and not to murder, registers, and Tony’s fight falls away abruptly.

“What?” Tony asks. If Pietro had the slightest inkling, he wouldn’t be sitting on top of Tony on this couch right now, his arms trembling with rage.

Tony is strong, but Pietro is stronger, and faster.

With pointed intent, Pietro pushes his knuckles under Tony’s chin without easing up on his grip – Tony’s head angles up obligingly, the fear in his eyes starting to mix with intrigue. Pietro’s palm cups close against Tony’s throat, his thumb digging into the soft divot between windpipe and neck muscle.

Tony’s arm flexes against Pietro’s hand, and Pietro pushes it against the cushions and settles his weight down on Tony’s thighs; Pietro could kill Tony right now, if he wanted to.

The power of the thought is exhilarating, and it evokes a different kind of consuming emotion, exacerbated by the burning curiosity in Tony’s eyes – Pietro leans down and kisses Tony, pushing his tongue between the man’s teeth, pressing their lips together ruthlessly.

Tony grunts under him, bucking up once; but his head doesn’t sink back, doesn’t shy away – it meets Pietro’s with a determination of its own, his tongue resisting Pietro’s until it slips and drives them closer together.

Pietro releases Tony’s arm and instead puts the hand into Tony’s hair. The man’s taken a shower, and his hair is smooth, still damp down near his scalp. Pietro knows he still smells like the battle, like sweat and rubble and singed hair from repulser fire.

Tony’s freed hand finds Pietro’s chest, and pushes until Pietro pulls away from the kiss.

“Sir?” FRIDAY asks, her voice even and robot, devoid of judgement.

Pietro understands the feeling of security, of knowing there’s someone out there who sees and knows all about you – but he’s never felt what it’s like to have that security unencumbered by judgement or perspective.

“What are you doing?” Tony asks, his eyes searching Pietro’s for some sort of explanation, darting from one to the other and back as if they hold different pieces of the answer.

Pietro doesn’t loosen his grip on Tony’s throat, doesn’t ease the weight he has placed on Tony’s arm, doesn’t let the hand in Tony’s hair drift. “Fuck me, old man.”

Another push from Tony’s hand, and Pietro gives another inch of space between them. He knows without a doubt that Tony will oblige him, but he’s never been good with patience. “Why?” Tony asks, but he won’t find any comprehension in Pietro’s eyes.

There is no answer to Tony’s question, and instead Pietro kisses him again, slower this time, though just as determined.

The lack of an answer doesn’t seem to bother Tony, and the man kisses back as his fingers drift away from Pietro’s chest, to the inside of his elbow, down his forearm, and finally into Pietro’s hand. Pietro lets his fingers fall away from Tony’s throat when Tony tugs at them. Pietro using his grip on Tony’s hair to maintain an advantageous angle.

“Gonna have to give,” Tony breathes between the clashes of their lips, between their grunts and groans. Tony pulls at his pinned arm, and Pietro lifts his leg to accommodate its release –when Tony tips him onto the couch he follows the push, his hand slipping from Tony’s hair.

Tony’s hand slowly reaches down, but Pietro shoves him away abruptly when his knuckles starts to graze the inside of Pietro’s thigh. The look of confusion on Tony’s face takes forever to manifest, dodging between arousal and alcohol before finally finding his cognitive senses.

“What?” Tony asks dumbly, and Pietro feels the sear of anger across his chest; with a grunt, he pushes Tony off of him, onto the floor, and follows the man so that he’s once again pinned. It happens quickly, too quickly for Tony to process in the moment; when he realizes that Pietro is once again on top of him and restraining him, he thrashes with frustration. It doesn’t last long, just three distinctive jostles, but for Pietro it feels prolonged, and restores his feeling of control.

“What the _hell_ is your problem?” Tony demands, and the implication that something is wrong with Pietro is getting old.

Pietro releases Tony’s hands and sits up. “Stop whining.”

Now that he’s released, Tony lies still, except for the hands that drift to Pietro’s thighs like they’re moving through thickened air. “You’re acting like a crazy person.”

“I said I wanted you to fuck me.”

“Get off of me and I will.” Pietro’s hand is around Tony’s throat in an instant, but this time there’s no fear in Tony’s eyes. This time there’s just a cool calmness. “Get the fuck off me,” Tony grinds, and his thumbs sit lightly at Pietro’s hip flexors.

Pietro removes his hand and takes Tony’s wrists, and pulls them as he slides off, until they’re both upright.

The situation doesn’t make sense to Tony, Pietro can tell – but he can also tell that Tony knows sex, and that he’s struggling not to fall back on auto-pilot. It’s a struggle Tony’s losing, too, and when Pietro pulls down the zipper of his battle suit to expose his bruised chest, Tony huffs, “Couch,” and they don’t talk again until it’s done.

When Pietro comes against the arm of the couch he feels satisfied, and he twists around and throws his legs over Tony’s lap, the man exhausted and sprawled against the couch.

“Dziadzius,” Pietro teases, but there’s a cold edge to it, and Tony shoves the legs off his lap with a grunt. “Make sure you drink plenty of water.”

“Shut up,” Tony tells him, annoyed, and Pietro gathers his clothes from the ground and dresses before Tony’s head has a chance to hit the back of the couch. Pietro stops long enough to catch Tony’s eyes, but there are no words, no forthcoming insights, or revelations.

So Pietro leaves, taking the stairs and entering Wanda’s apartment. Wanda isn’t there, and he locks the door behind him before falling onto the covers of her bed, and slipping into a deep sleep.

When she arrives four hours later she subjects him to tidbits of the virtues of teamwork before kicking him out of her room and throwing him into the shower. The morning doesn’t come soon enough, and when Pietro returns from his city-wide prowls for some delicious pastries, Wanda grabs him by the arm and escorts him to the SHIELD offices lower in the building.

Her presence feels patronizing as he’s forced to sit through an hour-long debriefing, and each of his flippant remarks is met with a disapproving huff from Wanda, and a stoic glare from the assigned agent. 

“We’re part of a team, Pietro,” Wanda tells him when they’re back at her apartment, “We can’t act like we used to, when it was just us. There’s a bigger picture out there and you need to listen. You don’t know everything. Find some humility and you might just learn something from these people.”

It’s about there that Pietro ducks out, and he makes sure to take the box of Wanda’s bakery-fresh croissants with him.

“I saw you ten hours ago,” Tony tells him irately, and Pietro doesn’t believe that it’s only been that long. It’s felt like a day, at least. Tony hadn’t been in the penthouse, but he had been in the workshop, and the door had tellingly opened when Pietro walked up. “Why do you have croissants,” is Tony’s follow-up, a question that Pietro thinks takes entirely too long to come about.

“They’re not for you,” Pietro says, just to be contrary; Tony plucks one from the box and Pietro doesn’t twist it away.

There’s something small and electronic on the table that Tony had been fiddling with and Pietro sits next to it.

Tony eyes the distance between the object and Pietro, and decides that Pietro has purposefully avoided it. “Did you debrief?” Tony asks, and Pietro sighs,

“You are all too obsessed with that concept.”

It’s not an answer Tony likes to hear, and his lips press together. There is a difference then, Pietro notes, between Tony’s soft annoyance, and the hard annoyance that causes his jaw to clench.

“Wanda made me go,” Pietro offers, and Tony shakes his head,

“Good. You keep acting like that, and you won’t be coming out with us again.”

Pietro scoffs at the idea – it’s because of him they have the beacon; he’s also saved countless civilians. “You need me.”

Tony takes a bite of croissant, and pretends to think for what’s an almost insufferably long time. “We need you to be part of the team – and if you can’t be part of the team, then you’re more trouble than you’re worth. God, I sound like Steve…”

The words lodge themselves into Pietro’s conscience, ‘more trouble than you’re worth’ - as Tony gripes about his turn toward the more Steve-like.

“I must be more along with this maturity thing than I thought…”

Tony continues to talk, and the words continue to echo in Pietro’s bones. The turmoil in his stomach cascades in an unsettling vortex.

‘More trouble than you’re worth’.

When Pietro shoots past Tony he doesn’t bother avoiding contact, and he can hear Tony yelp in pain after their shoulders collide against each other.

 ---

As their sexual escapades continue, Pietro feels more and more frustration towards Tony – towards Wanda, and Steve, Natasha, and Clint; towards himself, and the Tower; each passing day and each night spent roaming this big iconic American city trying to find _something_ , anything that will fill this growing void in his chest.

For five months, Pietro harbours an anger that grows deeper and uglier. It manifests and lashes out during conversations with Wanda, during briefs with the team, on missions, and especially at the debriefs Wanda forces him to attend.

And the person who earns the brunt of his anger, through no consequence of his own actions, is Tony.

 ---

“Why are you always such a fucking brat?” Tony demands, the smell of alcohol heavy in his breath, his fingers tightening around the strands of Pietro’s hair. Pietro is on his knees, Tony’s grip cranking his head awkwardly upwards.

Pietro’s hands come up to wrap around Tony’s forearm – in that moment, he wants to kill Tony.

He wants Tony to fuck him.

He wants Tony to drag him across the floor and kick him in the gut –

He wants Tony to kiss him, and slap him, and then drape a hand over his hip as they spoon in bed.

He wants to dig his fingers into the scars of Tony’s arc reactor, and hear Tony scream.

He wants to hear himself scream.

Pietro wants it all, but instead he glares up at Tony as Tony glares down at him. It’s a cool standoff, one that ripples across the lake of time; Pietro reaches the edge long before the stone has even dropped, for Tony.

One by one, Pietro unfurls his fingers from Tony’s forearm.

Tony uses his grip in Pietro’s hair to throw him onto the bed, and Pietro kicks futilely at him as Tony kneels at the edge of the bed.

“Do you want to fuck or not?” Tony asks belligerently, fending off the kicks with a wave of his hand. Pietro’s not kicking to hurt, but he doesn’t know when he started breathing this hard. “Turn over then,” Tony says, and Pietro turns over to his stomach before kneeling up to unbutton his pants, pulling them down to his knees.

“Fuck,” Tony mutters. His hand feels hot against Pietro’s hip, and Pietro helps as Tony pulls his pants off the rest of the way.

Tony uses lube, and a condom; his fingernails are trimmed. It’s easy to tell, because his fingers press into Pietro’s skin, grabbing and grasping as he works himself in and out. Pietro closes his eyes, wraps a hand around his dick, and waits until Tony comes before bringing himself off too.

As Pietro comes on the bedspread, Tony stretches out next to him, folding his arm up under his head as a pillow.

Tony’s looking at him, Pietro can tell, but instead of looking back he lets his head slip onto the mattress away from Tony, his knee pulled up to angle his hip off the bedspread as he lays on his stomach.

Tony’s drunk, and Pietro took advantage of that – but why does it feel like he’s the one that’s been violated?

With heavy fingers, Tony pulls off his condom.

“That was…”

The thing Pietro usually appreciates about Tony is his blunt honesty, but it seemed that the fatal flaw of humans was to always anguish when presented with sentiment. 

It hadn’t been good, it hadn’t been bad, it had just, been – 

Pietro wipes his hand off, swings his legs off the bed, picks up his pants, and leaves Tony stretched out and gazing after him with hazy eyes.

And perhaps Pietro’s infected just as badly as everyone else, because he can’t manage to leave without throwing, “See ya later, dziadzius,” over his shoulder.

  ---

Wanda is aware that something is going on.

Pietro’s been avoiding her since he’d first slept with Tony – the honesty he’d cultivated to combat her knowing mind was hard to find when faced with this subject matter. And while he didn’t doubt that Wanda had since gained more control over her powers, Pietro had grown too used to using truth as a weapon against her.

This was one truth that wouldn’t grant him power or autonomy – this truth gained him nothing in this case, but shame.

 ---

“What’s dziadzius mean?”

Pietro glares at Tony across the table, but Wanda doesn’t seem to assume any context. “It’s… a Polish word I think. Dziadek is the Polish word for grandfather, and I think dziadzius would just be a diminutive form of it, right Pietro?”

Pietro ignores the questioning look, watching the idle curiosity slide off Tony’s face; whatever fantasy the man had conjured up in his mind about the nature of their late-night ventures had clearly just been shattered.

It would have been better if Tony had asked the robot voice, instead of setting Wanda down this path of questioning.

The old man is hurt, but Pietro doesn’t understand why. Their interactions hadn’t held the slightest shred of romance or prospect.

“Did you hear it on the news?” Wanda tries again when Tony doesn’t respond, and Tony blinks back into the present,

“What – no. I mean, yeah, something like that.”

Wanda isn’t the least bit convinced, and Pietro watches her carefully – but her tendency to use her powers to dig deeper doesn’t make an appearance, and Pietro’s worries are unfounded.

“I was in Poland once,” Steve says, and the following story is exactly like him: endearing, outdated, and optimistic.

 ---

Pietro comes to the penthouse that night, and Tony stands by the window, his reflection distorted by the disjointed lights of the city. There is something different in the way he stands, something wrong in the way his back stiffens when Pietro presses behind him.

The lack of reaction is annoying, and Pietro takes a step away; the conversation at dinner had bothered the old man this much?

“What,” Pietro scoffs, his derision obvious, “You don’t want to fuck?”

Tony doesn’t turn around. The lights shift and shimmer beyond the window, and Pietro is too close to see Tony’s reflection. The breath Tony takes before his question is nearly as long as the question itself: “What is this?”

Pietro frowns. He had not expected to hear this sort of drama from Tony, questioning intent and searching for commonly acknowledged meaning; “What do you mean?”

“Seriously – what is this?” Tony turns, now, his movement starting at his elbow, the rest of his body twisting to follow. Strangely, he looks angry, his jaw tight and his teeth pressed together between words. “Some kind of kink you have? Daddy issues you’re working through? I’m here for a good fuck, but I’m not a stepping stone. I want nothing to do with your emotional baggage.”

The onslaught of accusations is so unexpected that Pietro has to blink, before realizing: “So you don’t want to fuck, then.”

“Get out of here, kid.”

Pietro leaves and that’s how it ends.

 ---

Tony brings home a lady with cultivated brown hair and long legs, a sharp nose and sculpted cheekbones. They’re loud in the elevator, and Pietro catches them in the communal kitchen. The woman sits on top of the island countertop, and Tony stands between her legs, hands on her hips.

Pietro stops in the doorway, his quest for a glass of water abandoned – the woman is tall, likely taller than Tony, and the man has to tip his head upward to reach her lips.

As Pietro watches them, Tony’s hands wander down to her ass, pulling her towards him as her arms drape around his shoulders; Pietro can see her thumb stroking the length of Tony’s neck, and he can feel his rage start to build.

Tony had rejected him, and replaced him with _this_?

  
What a typical turn of events; the sting of being passed over is familiar, but it still smarts. As always, better to have his sister, or anyone else, then to have to cope with his volatile moods or vie for his attention. 

Tony catches sight of Pietro’s shadow, but the speedster is already gone.

 ---

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be up here,” the girl giggles, and Pietro ignores her. FRIDAY locks the doors as they make their way up the stairs, but Pietro has stuffed one of them to prevent it from locking. What better place to woe a woman than the penthouse suite?

Tony isn’t there but he will be soon, and Pietro sets the woman up on the couch, brings her a drink in a crystal tumbler, and runs his hand along the length of the calf that drapes across his lap coquettishly.

They’re kissing on the couch when Pietro hears the telling signs of Tony arriving – the clop and shuffle of his shoes, and it’s with some force of will that Pietro avoids looking up.

The woman notices Tony’s presence after the man clears his throat loudly. Pietro finally looks up, and he’s surprised to see that Tony isn’t obviously drunk. The woman Pietro’s with shrieks with embarrassment, pulling down her skirt with exaggerated modesty.

“Oh, uh, you’re Tony Stark, aren’t you?”

Pietro sits back on the couch as the woman finds her composure – Tony flashes her a harsh smile, and coolly requests that she leave. When she looks at Pietro, he’s lounging against the arm of the couch, and her face turns red. Flustered, she goes, and the door to the elevator opens the moment she enters the hall.

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Tony tells him; the woman had been attractive, but not the end game, and Pietro can’t help the smugness as Tony reacts. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, but you don’t do that to people.”

Tony’s talking about the woman, and Pietro scoffs, “As if you haven’t done the same.”

The verbal lash smarts, and Tony’s shoulders tense up. He shakes his head, and crosses to fix himself a drink from the bar – there it is, the comfort of alcoholism, rearing its ugly head. “I don’t do that anymore.”

“Oh, I see.” Pietro stands hotly, the comment enraging him. But he doesn’t mention the woman on the countertop, the way Tony’s eye had clocked Pietro and the satisfaction that had followed. Within the span of a second Pietro’s between Tony and the bar, blocking his access. “And what else do you _not do_ , anymore?”

The anger that’s bubbling inside of him realizes its source when Tony says: “I don’t know why you’re still carrying this torch. I don’t sell arms anymore, and like I’ve said before, I’m sorry that your parents died because of one of my missiles, but I didn’t fire it. Now get over yourself, and get out of my way.”

Too quickly for Pietro to even register, his fist swings at Tony’s face, and he feels the man’s cheek crumple under the strength of his hit. Tony reels away, the force of the blow sending him to the floor.

Pietro jumps on him, pinning Tony’s wrists up by his ears and settling his weight on his waist. Tony’s strong, and nimble, but he’s not a match for Pietro’s speed and muscle.

Two abortive jerks is all the fight that Tony gives before letting his body lie listless; his left eye, above his cheek, doesn’t open. The skin where Pietro hit him is starting to swell, blistering with muscles instead of liquid, and Pietro watches the process blossom with morbid fascination.

What a beautiful thing, the human body is, so delicate, so reactive, and yet still so resilient.

“Are you going to kill me?” Tony coughs, and past his lips, his bleached white teeth are bloody. Pietro kisses him instead of answering. Tony’s blood is copper and tin, and the taste of it lingers against Pietro’s tongue.

Pietro pulls away and licks his lips – Tony pushes against his hands, but Pietro doesn’t budge.

“Get off me,” Tony tells him, and Pietro obliges, consumed with confusion and inexplicable emotions. The rage hasn’t subsided, but it’s amalgamated with an intense desire, and the combination leaves him amendable. “Little psychopath,” Tony grunts as he sits up – his fingers probe his cheek delicately, but even the lightest touch leaves him hissing. “Fucking crazy, is what you are. I think you broke something – I need some ice.”

In a moment, Pietro is back with three pills for pain, and ice, contained in a bag and wrapped in a thin cloth. Pietro can see alarm on Tony’s face, until the man processes that Pietro isn’t offering the pills and ice with an intention to hurt – Tony’s brain must be rattle, Pietro thinks, if it takes him this long to find conclusions.

“Don’t do that again,” Tony says, snatching the bundle from Pietro and gently pressing it against his cheek as he dry-swallows the pills.

Pietro, who can’t let well enough lie, feels compelled to say: “I could if I wanted to.”

“And I’m saying don’t,” Tony snaps. He removes the bag of ice and touches his cheek again tenderly. “God damnit, this better not be broken. FRIDAY?”

“Scanning, sir,” the disembodied voice chimes, and Pietro sits across from Tony, eyes drawn to the bruise that’s beginning to take shape.

Pietro wants to touch it, press his finger into it, dig into it until he hears Tony scream.

Pietro wants Tony to retaliate, to make a mark on him, bruise him, cut him, hurt him –

Pietro wants Tony to react violently.

If anything is deserving of violence, is it not violence itself? And yet his mind fails to associate Tony with the typical progression of things. Tony had murdered his parents with no provocation, and yet refuses to harm him with an ample amount.

The contradiction is maddening, and entirely nonsensical.

“Evidence of deep tissue bruising, but no damage to the bones, sir.”

A bill of clean health, so to speak.

Pietro’s eyes must look hungry because Tony adopts an incredulous accusatory look and asks: “What, you wanna fuck now?”

“Yes,” Pietro answers promptly, honestly. Tony sighs and stands up – Pietro is up on his feet the instance before him.

Tony throws at scowl out at him, and turns for his bedroom as he demands: “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Pietro tells him, and then he makes Tony the drink he’d been aiming for and beats him to the bedroom, setting the glass on the table. Too much ice in it, messy, and too full to look purposeful – Tony stares at it when he walks through the door.

“Is that an apology?”

“No.”

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt if you - ”

Pietro cuts him off with a stubborn, “No.”

“You’re the most contrary person I’ve ever met.”

That’s okay, Pietro thinks, I don’t understand myself either.

“You think I’m in the mood to fuck you now?” Tony asks, and Pietro says,

“No,” but he presses up against Tony anyways, grinding his erection against Tony’s hip and starting to pull Tony’s shirt up. Tony pushes back all of half a second before his fingers are grasping for the hem of Pietro’s shirt.

Tony gets Pietro’s shirt off first, and he turns Pietro around before shoving him against the bed. Pietro feels the edge of the bed against the back of his knee, knows that he can catch himself from falling – but he doesn’t, and as his body bounces in progressively muted movements, he stares up at Tony.

“You’ve got a serious problem,” Tony tells him, pulling off his own shirt and gingerly avoiding contact with his face. Pietro eyes the scar tissue from the arc reactor and starts to unbutton his pants, pulling the zipper down as Tony continues to speak, “Did you know that? A serious, fucking, problem.”

Tony’s cheek is a molted swollen mound – dark spots of purple are beginning to appear, and Pietro wants nothing more than to feel retribution. To feel the tangible force of Tony’s anger, his disappointment and frustration, his violence. Maybe if Pietro hit him again, Tony would make him scream.

Pietro lifts his legs when Tony gets close enough – he does it quickly enough that Tony runs his hip into Pietro’s foot; Tony’s lips press together in annoyance, and he grabs the ends of Pietro’s pants, and pulls.

The pants slip off Pietro quickly, and he lets his legs fall open, his half-erection exposed.

Tony walks between Pietro’s knees, places his hands flat against Pietro’s thighs. “Don’t ever do that to a woman again,” Tony says, the bottom of his eye beginning to puff out, and his fingers dig into Pietro’s muscles.

Pietro hisses; Tony’s nails are short but sharp.

“Tell me you won’t ever do that to a woman again,” Tony demands, and Pietro watches as Tony’s hands pull away from his thighs, maps the trajectory that brings them around the base of his cock before Tony’s an inch of the way there.

Pain twinges through his groin as Tony squeezes, and Pietro pushes his head back against the bed.

“Tell me,” Tony demands again, this time twisting –

Pietro starts to twitch away, but he catches himself. It would be easy to knock Tony away, to break his arm, to give him another black eye and escape. If history served as any sort of guideline, the consequences would be minimal.

Instead Pietro says, “Iwon’t,” in a rushed huff, twisting his hands into the sheets.

“What?” The grip around Pietro’s cock slackens, and Pietro closes his eyes, summoning the will to repeat the words.

“I won’t,” he states again, slower and tempered. With those two words, some aspect of the fire burning inside him leaves as well, the madness that accompanied the image of Tony and the brunette is doused.

Pietro doesn’t have to see Tony’s face to place the note of surprise he hears in Tony’s voice when he says, “Okay.” The pause that follows lingers into eternity – the slackened but present presence of Tony’s hands around Pietro’s cock, the stiffness gathering there; Pietro’s head thrown back but the tension released, for once, suspended in a rare moment; so rare, it takes Pietro a few moments of his own to place it as calmness.

Tony’s fingers eventually spread, his palms sliding up past Pietro’s groin and up the hollow of his stomach, riding the ridges of Pietro’s ribs, grazing the nubs of his nipples. They reach the crux of Pietro’s shoulders and wrap around his thin neck.

Hurt me, Pietro thinks, and Tony’s fingers tighten against his throat, but they don’t get tight enough.

“Do you like this?” Tony asks, and Pietro could snap his wrists, but he doesn’t and that should be telling enough. Tony slides his knees onto the bed, straddling Pietro’s stomach, keeping the pressure of his hands even. “Pietro.”

“Must you always talk?” Pietro asks, his eyes opening with a burst of annoyance. Tony’s staring down at him, and the V of Tony’s hand presses against Pietro’s windpipe. Pietro’s eyes narrow mulishly, and his hands find Tony’s ankles.

Tony kneels up and says, “Turn around,” and Pietro glares at him but he releases Tony’s ankles and twists his body so that his stomach is against the silky sheets. In a rare moment of efficiency, Tony guides Pietro’s head as he settles on his stomach, positioning his forehead flat on the sheet with his chin tucked down towards his chest.

“Don’t move,” Tony says, and Pietro feels himself bristle at the direction – what, does the man think he’s a dog? Tony slides off of him, and Pietro doesn’t waste a moment letting his face slip to the side.

With his nose unobstructed, Pietro can breathe more freely. He can see the shape of Tony moving in the peripheral of his vision, and when Tony disappears towards the headboard, he shifts his face to the other side and pushes up to his elbows to see better.

Tony digs in the bedside table, and it takes him a comically long time to realize that Pietro is watching him. The sigh that follows the realization pleased Pietro, and he doesn’t trouble himself to hide the emotion.

“Do you even have the capacity to listen?” Tony asks, standing up with lube and a condom.

The smug smile on Pietro’s face widens, “I’ve heard that I do not.”

Tony places a knee on the bedspread, tosses the lube and condom across Pietro. His hand goes for Pietro’s hair, and Pietro keeps still so that Tony can grab onto it – fingers twist painfully around the strands, and Tony pushes his face back into the bedspread. “Down,” he says, holding Pietro’s face against the sheets. With his nose pressed against the sheets, the air that Pietro can get through his mouth feels warm.

“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that? I may have been as bad as you once, but I’m not anymore.” Mention of the past, of a past version of Tony, has Pietro pushing up – but Tony places a knee between Pietro’s shoulders and puts his weight into it; Pietro resents this line of thought, but he doesn’t have the conviction to genuinely fight it.

The consequence of pushing back is more pressure against the back of his head; soon the corner of his mouth is his only access to air. “Stay still,” Tony demands, but his hand is already shaking with the exertion of continuous pressure. Pietro could easily throw him off, but he stills.

“I’m not anymore,” Tony repeats. “You can fuck with me all you want, but don’t ever bring anyone else into this.”

You started it, Pietro says, but it’s muffled and muted against the bed; Tony pushes his head to the side, and Pietro can see that his leg is outstretched to balance the weight of his body on the knee between Pietro’s shoulder and the hand at Pietro’s head. “You started it,” Pietro repeats, the words coming out with a ringing clarity.

Tony has no idea how far it goes back – his mind is retracing their encounters, following the trail of one-up’ing; whether Tony realizes that all this started fifteen years ago or not, Pietro can’t tell, but he shoves Pietro’s face back into the bedspread and says, “I don’t care. We’re ending it now. Don’t, move.”

The weight of Tony’s knee disappears, and Pietro can feel himself trembling.

Resistance, incredulity; desire, need.

Tony slips off the bed and returns to the bedside table for something. A brushing rustle, something soft, Pietro can barely hear it at all, but it’s not heavy nor bulky. Tony straddles his lower back, and Pietro can feel the soft-something running along his back as Tony touches his shoulders.

“I’ve got a blindfold,” he says, and Pietro shoulders tense up. It’s not a bag over his head, it’s not one of Strucker’s experiments, not the traffickers Wanda and he had gotten mixed up with when they were newly orphaned. “Say mum if it’s gonna be too much.”

Mum holds no meaning for him, but he understands the concept; his stony silence waging war with his flagging resolve, and he senses Tony flattening the band between his hands, feels the fabric slip over his forehead and onto the crook of his nose.

Tony pulls upwards, bringing Pietro’s face away from the bedspread – and continues to pull, until Pietro’s neck is arched uncomfortably backwards. The slip of fabric tightens around Pietro’s head, the knot sitting at the nape of his head. Tony’s fingers linger behind the knot, and when Tony’s weight disappears from his back, Pietro feels an insistent pull backwards.

Pietro slides off the bed, coming to his knees on the floor. Tony sits on the bed beside him, his movements telegraphed by the twist of his fingers behind the knot of the blindfold, and by the shift in the air around Pietro’s head.

Both of Tony’s hands are on Pietro’s head, and his fingers slip free of the knot.

“Pietro, I’m sorry,” Tony whispers into his ear, and the rage isn’t contained by the blindfold, it’s contained by the conflicting desires to believe, and to destroy. Tony brings Pietro’s head against the inside of his thigh, his arms wrapping Pietro’s head in a tight-armed hug. “Believe me. I know what happened started with me, and if I could go back and redo it, I’d be more careful. But I can’t and I’m trying – we’re all just trying, kid, we’re doing our best, and if you’d just give us a chance, you’d see that.”

But Pietro doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to pull the blindfold over his eyes and blindly believe – or trust. With a forceful push, Pietro knocks Tony back so hard the man bounces on the bed; the blindfold is ripped off and flung at his body, and by the time the fabric lands on Tony’s chest, Pietro and his clothes are gone, the glass of alcohol finally reaching the ground to splash against the hardwood floor.

 ---

“Where were you?”

“I was out,” Pietro answers; out of the apartment - out upstairs with Tony, technically, but sometimes an ambiguous answer resembled enough of the truth to pass for it.

“With who?”

Pietro glares at her persistence, “A man.”

Wanda’s eyes widen in surprise, though whether it’s his implication of intimacy or his biting tone, he’s not sure. “What man?”

“A man,” Pietro repeats. “Just a man.”

“Is this the first time you’ve seen him?” The curiosity might sound innocent, but the last thing Pietro wants to do is dwell in the humiliating experience he’d just suffered through with Tony.

Pietro dodges around her, keen on changing the subject, “What have you done today?”

“Has he hurt you?” Wanda asks, and he wonders if he’s somehow given himself away, or if she’s snooping in her own special way.

“Get out of my head, Wanda.”

“I’m not in your head, Pietro,” Wanda snaps, and her eyes light up with the charged emotion her voice carries, “I don’t need to be in your head to see that something’s wrong, and has been wrong for weeks.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he spits out, and he takes off but Wanda slams the door shut so quickly it must have been instinctive.

Pietro turns on his heel and glares at her, but Wanda folds her arms. “You’re not running away from this conversation.”

“There is no conversation.”

Wanda holds her ground, “What’s been going on, Pietro?”

“Nothing, Wanda,” Pietro insists – and then he feels it, the telling pressure against his thoughts, the gently probe into his mind. The rage explodes in an instant, and he lashes out mentally as well as physically – mentally at Wanda, throwing the heat of his anger directly at the point of pressure; and physically, ripping the door clear of its lock and disappearing down the stairs.

The pain Wanda feels resonates in his chest for a heart-wrenching, full human second; always, always prying, always meddling, always delving where she wasn’t wanted. Pietro feels a savage possessiveness for his mind in that moment, a boiling hatred of its vulnerability when faced with Wanda’s powers.

Never good enough, never alone, never allowed to nurse his shame and embarrassment in the comfort of the privacy of his mind, knowing always that Wanda was there to see right through him. 

Pietro spends the next two days roaming the city restlessly – Wanda doesn’t try to contact him, an act of contrition, perhaps. When he returns, she offers him a plate of food wordlessly, and the connection between them resembles a gnarled, petrified branch.

 ---

The next call to arms happens four days later, and Pietro has not seen Tony in a week. The old man’s words from the week previous still cut at him the moment he sees the streamline armour, and from that moment he reacts belligerently to everything Tony does or says.

Pietro can be a team player, can look out for the other guy, can take direction – he follows Steve’s orders despite his better judgement, disputes them quickly and efficiently when his gut wins out. But he doesn’t acknowledge Tony, or respond to any of his directives. A simple, “Quicksilver!” from Steve will get his attention, but near the end of the firefight, he’s certain that everyone knows he holds a grudge against Tony.

And then a shot goes astray, and he abandons his route to tackle Tony off a bridge, the both of them tumbling into the cold river, but neither of them hit. 

Tony grabs Pietro around the chest and steers them up and out of the water, and Pietro pushes against his arm until the moment Tony drops him. “Calm down, kid,” Tony says, his voice filtered through a mic and speakers; Pietro clips his armour so fast Tony staggers and needs to engage a repulser to keep himself upright.

“Pietro,” Steve snaps, and the sound of his anger is unbridled even through the comms, “Get back to the Tower.”

“But we’re not done fighting.”

“You are.”

He must have seen, Pietro concludes, and as he heads back to the tower he sees Steve standing on top of a building, with clear sightlines to the space that Tony’s blasting off from. Pietro disengages his comm and returns to the tower to spite them, moodily crashing through the communal kitchen and ripping open packages of chips.

Pietro devours most of the bags in the cupboards, starting ostentatiously with Tony’s favorites. FRIDAY announces the arrival of the rest of the team, and Pietro heads to the hanger to meet them.

Wanda’s voice pierces his ears as it lobs accusations at Tony: “What did you do to him?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Tony protests, and Steve interjects with a controlled calmness,

“Let’s all just settle down and take a minute, okay?”

“That little psychopath’s been after me from day one, so don’t got throwing his crazy on me.”

“My brother is not a psychopath, and he’s not crazy,” Wanda answers, and Pietro is sure if he looked at her eyes they would be tinged with red – but he’s not looking at her, his eyes are on Tony, and he lands a punch at the corner of Tony’s mouth before the iron man mask collapses down around his face and Tony blasts away from him.

“Pietro!” Steve shouts at him, but Wanda’s got his body contained in a swirl of red energy that makes his legs heavy and his arms useless.

Tony hovers some feet away, the faceplate back up so they can all see the line of blood that trickles down his chin; a matching sight for his still bruised but recovering. “Crazy,” Tony repeats, and Pietro glares at him. If only Wanda would let him loose, he would be more than happy to prove Tony right.

“Get out of here Tony, I’ll talk to you later,” Steve dismisses, and Tony rolls his eyes but departs. As he disappears, Steve rounds on Pietro to demand: “What is the matter with you?” 

A multitude of things, but before he answers he turns towards his sister. “Wanda,” he says, and he’s surprised by the stony impassiveness he’s met with,

“So that you can run again, like you always do? No. Answer Steve’s question.”

But he won’t, he refuses to, and he knows that Wanda won’t dare to invade the integrity of his mind like this, not here, and not with a witness.

What he isn’t counting on is Steve crossing his arms, bolstering Wanda’s resolve with his own determined confidence. “We’re going to find out one way, or another.”

The threat is implicit, and Pietro scoffs, “You wouldn’t dare.”

Steve sighs, and he looks genuinely contrite from behind the shield, with his cowl flapping uselessly at his neck. “I don’t want to do it this way Pietro.”

Pietro’s silence holds, stretching five times longer than the one Wanda and Steve hear. They will not know, and this is one thing that Wanda will not take from him.

“Wanda?”

Pietro turns his focus to his sister at Steve’s directive, who shakes her head twice before he feels the notable pressure in his mind. Wanda’s concerned for him, he can feel that first and foremost – but his mind is his own and he doesn’t want to know what Wanda will see in it.

“Wanda,” he warns, and it’s a warning that Wanda doesn’t heed; the pressure grows, and Pietro fights it, but Wanda is stronger – has always been stronger – than Pietro, and he resists until his strength abruptly crumples under her will.

Tony, the sex, the violent thoughts and the mind-numbing doubt; self-consciousness, uncertainty, the humiliation and the desperate desire to reconcile the acts of a mad man with the acts of Tony, the two somehow one and the same; the gentle words whispered into his ear and the whirlwind of confusing rage and pain they’d released; betrayal and collective resentment, at Wanda, at her ability, at the mere idea of her ability. The last two months in a rush of blur, and he slumps to the floor in an overwhelming fit of tears.

< Brother, > Wanda says, but it’s too late, the damage is done, and she wraps her arms around Pietro, cocoons his mind in a warm embrace of love; the betrayal has shattered his soul. She’s done the very thing he’d trusted her to not do, and under the directive of someone else no less.

Steve stands to the side, and Pietro hears them talking over his head, but all he can think about is Tony and his rejection, of Pietro’s own rejection of Tony, and the emptiness he feels still not knowing the answer to a question he can’t articulate - all the lasting moments between each second is filled with the enormity of his failure, and none of it allows Wanda to act as a crutch.

“Just trust me Steve,” Wanda says, and Pietro’s comforted marginally by the knowledge that she won’t tell Steve what she knows. Steve walks away from them and Wanda presses Pietro’s head against her chest, holds him tightly. < I’m so sorry, Pietro, > she tells him, pressing a kiss against his head.

Resentment flares up, indignation at being treated as a child. < Let go of me, > he mutters at her, half-heartedly pushing away.

But Wanda can read his mind, knows what it is he struggles to find words for. Wanda knows that he doesn’t really want her to let go, long before he realizes it himself.

There’s comfort, in the security of someone who sees and knows everything – Pietro had just forgotten that it was possible to come without judgement from Wanda. 

 ---

< I know it’s difficult, but you must talk to him. >

< Leave it be, sister. >

< You must talk to him. >

< I must not, and I will not. >

The red energy stiffens his muscles, and he finds his escape thwarted by Wanda’s powers. Days, they have been talking about this – talking through this, Wanda insists, and every time he tries to leave she prevents him from doing so. It’s uncanny, that even in her sleep she can keep this level of focus.

In a desperate attempt to rid himself of her, he finally agrees to see the man; what he doesn’t count on is Wanda bringing Tony to her apartment, and being trapped within the four walls by the strength of Wanda’s will.

Wanda knows it wasn’t his intention to meet with Tony, but conveniently doesn’t concede that her knowledge makes the meeting count as coercion.

Tony enters the room cautiously, surveying both Wanda and Pietro thoroughly. The familiar blend of antagonizing hatred and desire fills Pietro’s body, and he’s grateful that Wanda has promised to refrain from digging into his thoughts again.

“Thank you for coming,” she tells Tony, and Pietro wants nothing more than to push Tony against the wall, press against his throat and have Tony retaliate. “Steve already talked to you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony nods dismissively – not a good impression to make on Wanda, Pietro could have warned him about that, “Civility, no instigative comments. I know.”

Wanda frowns unhappily. Pietro knows that the moment he makes a move on Tony, Wanda will stop him in his tracks. It’s a deterrent, but he finds himself tempted to test her reflexes. Tony sits down at the table and Wanda takes the seat adjacent to him – Pietro stays by the wall, a bid to remove himself from temptation.

“You’ve been seeing my brother,” Wanda says, and Tony leans back in his chair and makes a disputative face. “You wouldn’t call it that?”

“Sure, we fucked. Pietro’s also tried to murder me half a dozen times.”

Wanda knows this is vaguely true so she doesn’t dispute it, but Pietro has no such qualms, “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

“That’s not helpful, Pietro,” Wanda sighs.

“So why the kid-murderer act?” Tony asks, and he’s doing exactly what Steve warned him against doing, but Wanda’s already got a hold on Pietro’s body and he can feel the heaviness that warns him movement will be futile.

It forces Pietro to acknowledge that he doesn’t know why. And that makes him realize he actually might know why. “You hurt me,” he says, and Tony’s face twists into confusion.

“That was barely anything- ”

Pietro knows the instance he’s talking about, the vice grip on his cock that he still thinks about sometimes at night; but it’s not the one that Pietro meant. “You killed my parents,” he clarifies, and Tony’s bolstered attitude deflates a fraction.

“Pietro,” he starts, and it’s the same voice he used before, and Pietro wants nothing more than to cover that face with his hand and make that voice stop.

Wanda reaches out and puts a hand on Tony’s. “I think what Pietro’s wondering, is, if you had the capacity to do it once, don’t you still carry that capacity?”

“I…” Tony looks helplessly at Wanda; the regret is real, the contrition is real, the desire for things to be different, is real. “I didn’t know. I was naïve, and I trusted… look, you know why no one gets the Iron Man tech?” He looks at Pietro when he says it, the palm of the hand that’s not under Wanda’s turned upright. “Because I don’t trust people with my tech anymore. My best friend has a suit, and he’s got more responsibility in his pinkie than anyone I know. But no one else, gets my suits.”

What kind of damage could a suit like that do in unfavorable hands? People had tried to mimic it, but Tony was right, no one else had the technology.

“I can’t change what happened – no one can change what happened. We can only change what happens from the moment you realize what’s wrong. So that’s what I did.”

Pietro’s parents were dead – both their parents, Pietro and Wanda’s, were gone. The resentment lingers but the temper finally feels quelled; their deaths were avoidable, pointless, random. But did the blame really lie with Tony?

“Pietro?” Wanda prompts, gently, her hand slipping off Tony’s, and Pietro still wants to hurt Tony, still wants Tony to hurt him. Violence – Pietro provokes it, but Tony doesn’t retaliate. Tony has the capacity, but he doesn’t act on it.

“Were you only using me for self-flagellation?” Tony asks.

Was he? Pietro doesn’t have the answer, and he looks between Tony and Wanda silently. Wanda doesn’t offer him an out, and Tony seems determined for an answer; time is limited, and that’s why the time that Pietro has is so much more precious. Time for him extends, and that just gives greater reason for it not to be wasted.

Identifying the feeling is a struggle, but finally Pietro answers, “No.”

It’s not a promise for the future, just an acknowledgement of what was.

“I think it goes without saying,” Wanda says, contradicting herself, “But the aggression needs to stop. Pietro, you hear me? Attacking people is not an appropriate way to express yourself.”

“I know that,” Pietro tells her irately; Wanda fixes him with a scathing look,

“Then act on it.”

Pietro doesn’t respond to that; Tony Stark has only ever been the man that killed his parents, the target of his quest for retribution. But if he peeled away those aspects, what was left?

“And if you’re going to continue to see each other,” Wanda is saying, “You both need to find better ways of expressing yourselves.”

Tony opens his mouth, perhaps to protest the blanket statement, but decides better when Wanda shifts her scathing look to him. “If,” Tony says, and Pietro repeats not a beat later,

“If.”

“Did you have anything else you wanted to say?” Wanda asks, looking at Tony, who shakes his head with a one-shoulder shrug. “Pietro?”

Pietro shakes his head as well, finding himself eager for this whole ordeal to be over.

“Thank you for coming Tony,” Wanda says. They say goodbye at the door, and Pietro quickly becomes impatient with his bogged down limbs as the door closes.

“Release me,” he tells his sister, who has always known him too well.

Wanda does not release him, and instead tightens her hold so that he can shift his weight, but not take a step. “Wanda!” he complains, and Wanda sits down in the chair Tony had been sitting in, folding her hands on the table,

“If I let you go, you’ll run right out the door. I want you to talk to me, Pietro, and if you’re not going to do that, you need to at least absorb what you just heard.”

“I absorb things ten times faster than you do,” he reminds her.

Wanda smiles smugly at him, as she does each time he inadvertently puts is foot in his mouth. “Then there’s no excuse for it not to really sink in.”

For an hour, Wanda keeps him there – an endless hour, during which Pietro tests the strength of her will, needles and taunts her, whines and complains and tries to barter; and always comes around to repeating Tony’s words in his mind, in the quiet moments in-between.

 ---

“You’re back,” Tony states, and Pietro thinks that’s rather obvious. Clearly, he is, though it’s taken him nearly a week to stomach setting foot in the penthouse. The time has helped, and though he’d never admit it, the forced reflection had helped as well.

Once again, Pietro’s noticing the lines etched into Tony’s face, the way his hand holds the drink in it steady. “I can leave,” Pietro tells him, and Tony puts the drink down on the coffee table.

“Or you could come sit with me,” Tony offers, and Pietro’s on the couch before Tony has time to turn his head.

Dozens of moments extend and contract as Tony looks at him; too many moments, too much time wasted.

“Fuck me, old man,” Pietro tells him, and Tony tut’s – his hand slides out, wrist twisting so his fingers closer around Pietro’s wrist, squeezing.

“What did your sister tell you about using your words?”

Pietro scoffs, twists his wrist out of Tony’s fingers, and shifts to straddle Tony lap. Pietro pushes Tony’s head up, uses his thumb to gently trace the line of Tony’s throat.

The need to hurt, to cause pain, is still there, but subdued now, like a burn under water. Tony watches Pietro’s eyes closely, flicking between both pupils, trying to see – what? Whatever might be there for Tony to find, Pietro lets him search, and his thumb sits at the base of Tony’s neck, but still he doesn’t press. 

Tony’s hand slides around his ass, and Pietro grins, presses an insistent kiss onto Tony’s lips. “Fuck me, Dziadzius,” he says softly, and he’s not sure he ever really meant it as an insult.

Tony’s hand slides up Pietro’s arm, his fingers threading into Pietro’s hair. “Don’t call me old,” he says, tugging on Pietro’s hair and pushing until Pietro’s on his knees between Tony’s legs.

“Honesty is a virtue I cannot compromise.”

“Asshole,” Tony mutters, and Pietro smiles smugly.


End file.
